Watch “Spy Kids: All the Time in the World” Movie
It is written and directed, as always, by Robert Rodriguez, comes up short. Visually dreary (don’t bother paying the 3-D premium), lazily yet confusingly plotted, dominated by jokes involving vomit and an endlessly flatulent baby, “All the Time in the World” feels more like straight-to-DVD filler than a chapter in one of the last decade’s most entertaining and sophisticated family-film franchises.
Midway through the movie, after the new set of siblings has been let in on their stepmother’s big secret, Ms. Vega leads them into a room where the artifacts of the original spy kids program — shut down seven years ago because of budget problems, and she says — is stored. In the room are what appear to be models and sets from “Spy Kids” 1 through 3, a bit of a self-homage by Mr. Rodriguez that invokes a dangerous nostalgia for the giddy, Indiana-Jones-inside-a-toy-box spirit of those earlier films.
In fact, the eventual message of “All the Time in the World” — summed up by the quickly reformed, time-manipulating villain as, “You have to live life moving forward, not back” — could be taken as a rueful comment on the folly of trying, after eight years, to recapture the magic of three films made in a compressed three-year span with a consistent (and wildly talented) cast. Unless, of course, you’re just trying to milk a few more dollars out of the title. There’s all the time in the world for that.